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Topic: Ruined photo, or rescue opportunity? (Read 14703 times)

Hello I recently shot a wedding and during the group photos it became rather rushed as I was given a very short amount of time to set up for my shots. During the chaos and confusion I think one of my flashes malfunctioned or simply turned off, here is the resulting photo. My question, is this photo ruined or is there a way to rescue it? The shadows on a few faces is what is in question if you didn't notice right away Hopefully this isn't a huge fail on my part! Thank you everyone!

I take it even in the haste, you took a couple of shots of this gathering? Are the shadows on the same faces on all the shots? Otherwise in PS one can transplant well exposed faces on top of the under exposed ones

As long as the data is there you can rescue it, though it might involve some work. Even the guy in the back has some resolution left in his face, so you can mask (with smooth alpha-border) the shadow in PS & raise it, then correct for the white balance. As long as you downscale the shot to the resolution you posted people might not even recognize the edit & be more worried about the clipped whites and cut feet :-> ... but if you didn't take $10k for the wedding and the clients aren't amateur photogs I'd say you'd be still ok.

Please tell us you shot RAW. If you didn't, let this be the day that you switch to 100% RAW shooting.

There is work to do with this image, but it's by no means lost. If this needs to be your money shot and you don't feel up to the task, pay someone to do it for you. If the result still looks a bit weird, it's extraordinary how much conversion to B&W can conceal. Good luck, and post the rescued image when it's done.

Please tell us you shot RAW. If you didn't, let this be the day that you switch to 100% RAW shooting.

There is work to do with this image, but it's by no means lost. If this needs to be your money shot and you don't feel up to the task, pay someone to do it for you. If the result still looks a bit weird, it's extraordinary how much conversion to B&W can conceal. Good luck, and post the rescued image when it's done.

Oh I shoot raw always but I don't think I can post a 20mb file can I? I'm not very good with photoshop if you know of any guides or videos tht can illustrate how to do this that would help otherwise I will just try the ideas you guys listed.

I take it even in the haste, you took a couple of shots of this gathering? Are the shadows on the same faces on all the shots? Otherwise in PS one can transplant well exposed faces on top of the under exposed ones

Good luck

The shadows are the same in the other shots I did get a shot where the flashes did it fire at all maybe I can use that somehow.